It’s finishing and it’s surreal. The bags are packed, the truck is empty, life is ready to start again and an amazing chapter of all our lives is coming to an end.

Ester busy wth packing her stuff

The last 24 hours on the truck have been absolutely crazy. Yesterday we spent the entire day packing up our stuff. Each of us had to get out of he truck all our things, put them on the floor and start to chase them, selecting what to bring home and what to leave here. We looked like gipsies and on the ground there was everything, six months of Africa, six months of life, it was like preparing a moving, when you find a lot of old things and you select them, looking at them maybe for the last time. An entire life back in a backpack again, as usual, feeling like life goes on and starts newly one more time. It was a great feeling of reborn, and even if it was sad and emotional at some point, there was in the air the excitement of a new beginning, for all of us.

My backpack packed and ready for the next travel!

We gave a lot of clothes and tons of spaghettis to the charity, and we burned the rest, after the barbecue.

Andres ws busy with packing for almost an entire day

Last night was a crazy night, like all the other nights since we we entered this crazy country. We had an amazing barbecue and everybody started to be a bit tipsy at that time, but the entire situation got totally crazy when we started to burn our things. Garry got paranoid by the entire situation and moved the truck and his tent away from us, while we kept celebrating that fantastic night until very late.

The truck: will we be missing it?

Today we are on our loved and hated orange truck for the last time and it feels weird to see it full of all our bags and empty at the same time. We are all too tired and hangover to realize that it is finishing, and it is maybe better like this. Each of us has packed his or her own life back, we are gonna spend the last two weeks together in Cape Town and then everything is gonna finish and start again. It is exciting to think about Cape Town, where we have rent a big apartment together and where we will be staying under a roof and incredibly sleeping in a bed. Yes, the bed, and the bathroom, the two things we miss the most at this stage and what a relief to put that dirty tent down for the last time this morning.

Hangover on the last day on the truck

So, even though I still don’t fully realize it, this great adventure is coming to an end. The instinct would say it went really quick, but it is not true. These six months have been long and intense. Even in those days when you thought nothing was happening there was always something that happened, something to remember, a face, a dish, a situation, a music, an adventure. In the past six months Africa has fulfilled our lives with so many emotions and events that it has been like living in a dream, and now, watching it from the far end, it looks so unreal and ethereal, far away from the world that we are now crossing, for the last time on the Bedford.

6 months of life in the truck

Yesterday all our objects, all our dirty and old clothes, our shoes, everything was telling us a story, our stories which we shared together for almost 200 days.

All the pasta left in the truck and given to charity

I can’t believe it is finishing! Today in the truck we are all silent, a bit for the hangover and mainly to have the time to realize what is happening. Like for any travel that comes to an end, it s always difficult to accept that it is over. For this one it is even more difficult because it has to do with the entire world that we have crossed and learnt to love, and that we will never find it anywhere else in the world. That world is like a bubble, made of dreams, that fortunately still exists despite the rush and technologies of the world where we live, and that remains the purest of all the possible ones, and that, like lost paraadise, we will probably miss it forever.

Burning

I already had the feeling we were out of it as soon as we let Angola and entered Namibia, and even though it was not a nice sensation it has been good to get used to it in the last month on the truck. It would have been a shock to leave the truck and that world at the same time. In this past month we got used to our reality again, and we are slowly coming back to it. We all still surprise when in a supermarket we find so many products and variety of food, and for the past month we have been eating meat every day, remembering always the time we didn’t have it for months and months.What a great lesson Mother Africa teaches you. Your world, our world, my world, will never be the same as it appeared in my eyes before leaving in January. From now on, from today when we are all gonna get off this truck, everything will get a special meaning and will become precious, and all our adventures are ready to become great stories to share for a lifetime.